Humanverse

Rob vs Robyn

American parents have registered 64,604 Robyns since 1880, against 8,775 Robs. Robyn is still ahead, with 159 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Rob against Robyn, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Rob Robyn

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 118 years in which either name was published, Robyn for 90 years and Rob for 28 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Rob Robyn
Total US births 8,77564,604
Most in one year 5551,907
Babies in 2025 7159
Estimated living today 6,80059,000
Median age today 6050
Peak year 19631964
Best rank 334th boys195th girls
Rank in 2025 9,714th1,436th
First recorded 18841921
Girls / boys 0 / 8,77563,364 / 1,240

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Robs alive today are over 60; half the Robyns are over 50. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Rob Robyn
England and Wales 3815,232
Ireland 74,620
Scotland 574,365
Belgium 517237

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Rob and Robyn.